


Tell Me I'm Cute

by WhatEvenAmI



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Avengers Family, Avengers Movie Night, Avengers Tower, Aww, Blankets, Comfort, Cuddling & Snuggling, Cute, Disney, Domestic Avengers, Gen, Hair Braiding, Humiliation, Hurt/Comfort, I love how that was already a tag, Mother Hen Steve Rogers, Movie Night, No one gets hurt, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Ridiculous, Snuggies, Torture, Tumblr, for once, no seriously this is actually fucking ridiculous, the Avengers get on tumblr
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-17
Updated: 2015-06-17
Packaged: 2018-04-04 17:08:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,190
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4145853
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WhatEvenAmI/pseuds/WhatEvenAmI
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He is a highly trained assassin specializing in efficient kills and espionage. He is not a tragedy, not weak or pathetic, he does not need to be sheltered and fussed over. And he is most certainly not <em>adorable</em>.</p><p>In which Bucky gets mother-henned a lot.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tell Me I'm Cute

**Author's Note:**

> I have been not feeling good and I need cuteness, so I tried writing some.
> 
> Title is a reference to Shel Silverstein's [Tell Me](http://www.poemhunter.com/best-poems/shel-silverstein-2/tell-me-145/).

It's the way they treat him, that damn soft-eyed look he sees when Steve thinks he's not looking. He knows how they look at him, like he's just some goddamned tragedy.

Like the last movie night, and damn it, even their movie choices are so careful. It goes to show how much they tiptoe around him that they wouldn't even let him see fucking Star Wars. It's worse when he ended up freaked out and trembling over their actual selection—an animated  _kids' movie._

To be fair, it was an absolutely fucked-up movie that in Bucky's opinion should never be viewed by  _actual_ children.  There was this city full of monsters that got their power by making little kids  _scream_ , who the hell thought of that? As if that wasn't bad enough, there was a chair made to  _torture_ the kids to get the screams right out of them. A chair where they got pinned down and—

Steve, sitting next to Bucky, was the first to notice him ramrod-straight and quivering, and Bucky couldn't fucking help falling into his encircling arms. Steve kept whispering that it was okay, it wasn't real, it was just a movie. Like Bucky didn't  _know_ it was a movie; it was a  _fucked-up_ movie, is what it was. Still, when Steve squeezed him and stroked his hair it felt better, and maybe it was goddamned embarrassing but it was also kind of nice.

That is, until he was okay to open his eyes again and noticed that no one was really watching the movie anymore. The looks they were giving ranged from concern to pity to something Bucky didn't even  _recognize_. And then he  _did_ get it, and he detangled his limbs from Steve's and walked right out of the room.

"No one was laughing  _at_ you," Natasha said when she found him sulking in the gym banging halfheartedly at a punching bag, "Well, fair warning, Tony's started calling you two Spangles and Snuggles, but—"

The metal fist tore through the bag and beads went flying. Bucky blinked, rattled.

"—he's drunk and an idiot. It _was_ kind of adorable." Natasha continued, unfazed.

Bucky ignored her, slamming away at a new bag in earnest now, face burning behind a curtain of hair. If there's one thing he isn't, right after weak or tragic, it's  _adorable._

*

There are varying degrees of resistance to the Disney-themed Snuggies.

So apparently there's some running joke about Natasha and Clint getting into some ridiculous kind of trouble at Disney World. What they were doing in fucking Disney World, Bucky has no clue. Natasha refuses to speak of it, and every time Clint tries she throws things at him until he shuts up. Her trajectory is fantastic, he'll give her that; just last week Clint took a bouncy ball to the forehead when Nat was two rooms away. All Bucky's saying is, if she's going to smirk at him and call him  _adorable_ , well, you don't dish it if you can't take it.

"You learn that from Tumblr?" she asks when he says so. He doesn't answer, and she smirks harder.

The point is that Maria won't let anyone forget about Disney, and every so often, a package full of themed merchandise shows up at the Tower. This time it's a kind of wearable blanket, the sort of thing that would be a really good idea if some genius hadn't decided to call it a Snuggie.

And if his wasn't designed like Olaf the Snowman. He's just gotten Tony to quit calling him Frosty.

The Snuggies would probably have gone into the back of a closet somewhere had it not been for Thor's return to the Tower this morning. He's taken an immediate liking to the Snuggies and has been walking around grinning broadly in full Donald Duck attire.

Then Tony is found at three in the morning, mumbling to himself while tinkering with a metal suit, wrapped in the Mickey Mouse Snuggie. Pepper takes advantage of his oblivion to the surrounding world, dressing up as Minnie and snapping a photo. The next morning an Iron Man suit dressed as Cinderella chases Pepper through the Tower in pursuit of her phone, but the the picture has already gone viral.

Clint shrugs and easily adopts the Pluto suit, though Natasha tells him he should be Goofy. It's Sam who ends up in the Goofy Snuggie on a visit, though Bucky's pretty sure Tony's lying about the shortage of blankets. Sam seems cool with it.

Bucky's still with Natasha, firmly refusing to wear the damn thing. He doesn't speak to Bruce for a week after the first appearance of the Sulley Snuggie. They can laugh all they want, but Monsters Inc. was fucked up and he's still not over it. He doesn't  _care_ if the blankets are 'calming'. He wants no part.

Then comes the goddamned article.

They hadn't found much about him when they were combing Natasha's leaked files, but apparently some determined reporter had dug up something. They're all sharks, Pepper tells him later, they go into a frenzy when they smell blood.

The pictures of the cryo tank had been bad enough, but then there are the others. The Avengers try so hard to shelter him and then Pepper printed off that fucking article and left it on the breakfast table. Just long enough to go get more juice, but that was long enough for Bucky to see his own face, frosty blue and deathly in the cryo tank's viewing window. He knew he shouldn't look, but that article was about him, that article had been webcast to the entire world. How could he  _not?_

It's embittering and humiliating to admit that maybe he really does need to be shielded. Because when Pepper gets back to the table he's staring, shaking, at the article, feeling a creeping cold not dissimilar to the way he felt in that godforsaken tank, making its way through his guts, icy tendrils curling their way into his lungs.

He can't stop seeing those fucking pictures. There's one of him ass-naked and bruised while hands freely check over his body, detached and clinical and taking inventory of his condition. The one where he's screaming against his restraints, his face trying to twist itself apart, as the metal band closes around his head.

And then there's the close-up of him squatting on the ground, his ankles in chains and his head down, pathetic and exposed, hair hanging over his face (one small fucking mercy). He remembers that punishment; not what had merited it, but he remembers the cramping of his muscles as he wondered how long he'd have to stay like that, the hunger and thirst and weakness, struggling not to flinch when the lash tore across his back. When they finally let him up he'd only wanted to collapse on the ground. Instead, shaking, he'd forced himself to his feet, walked blank-faced on stiff legs because he wasn't going to give them something else to laugh at only now the whole _world_  has seen—

He's aware, suddenly, of soft voices in his ear, Pepper and Steve draping a warm blanket around him. Pepper's apologizing; the article has vanished from the table. He's sniffling into Steve's shoulder, trying to get it together but Steve's murmuring that it's okay, he knows, he's so sorry. Bucky ends up holding onto him a lot tighter than planned. It's just that Steve is warm and solid, so insistently there and alive, and Bucky's still trying to shake the seeping chill of cryo. And Steve does know. He knows the terror of freezing alive.

And by the time he realizes that the blanket they gave him is actually the Olaf Snuggie he's too worn-out to care. Okay, his face goes kind of hot, but he just buries it in the blanket. And then he hears the camera flash as Natasha breezes by.

"Adorable," she calls over her shoulder. "By the way, you don't mind if this goes on Tumblr, do you?"

"You're pretty smug for a woman dressed like Daisy Duck!" He calls after her.

A moment later he blinks as a bouncy ball hits him in the nose.

*

Natasha's taken to sneaking pictures of him snuggling up in the Olaf blanket, and by the third day he could just about strangle her with it, only it turns out she's actually doing him a bit of a favor. From what he's seen browsing the Web, the pictures have gone viral, drawing attention away from that goddamned article and burying it in a pile of stupid "Frozen" puns. And if JARVIS has been programmed to keep asking him (in a resigned and tired sort of tone) if he would like to build a snowman, well, that's fucking annoying but fairly harmless.

( _Fairly_. Nat's not the only one in peril of asphyxiation by Snuggie.)

The newest round of photos has been circling Tumblr garnering mostly an outpouring of love, appreciation, and exclamations of "squee" and "can we just take a moment", whatever the hell that's supposed to mean. Sure, it's a little embarrassing, but if he's going to keep receiving public attention, he'd much rather have it be this kind.

He doesn't even realize how attached he's gotten to the stupid Olaf Snuggie until Steve hesitantly tugs at it one morning and says, "Buck, you can wear this all you want, but you might want to take it off at least to wash it."

Okay, so  _that's_ fucking embarrassing.

He can't even hide under the hood of the Snuggie while it's running through a spin cycle, so he spends the morning shielding his face behind his hair. And apparently even  _that_ doesn't come without its risks.

"You've got to get that off your face. How can you even see?" Pepper sighs.

"Leave the man alone, Pepper, he missed out on the days of emo boy bands. Let him live the dream. Or the nightmare come to life." Tony shoves an entire waffle in his mouth.

"Can I just—" Pepper is behind him, brushing out his hair with her hands. He doesn't even try to dodge, just lets her work her fingers through. She isn't rough, like the techs who combed out the remnants when he vomited, not like the handlers who jerked him around by the hair when dissatisfied and threw him to the floor.

Pepper's patient and gentle and she talks quietly to him while she works. "You have the nicest hair, you know, I have to work on mine _forever_. Do you do anything to it, or d'you just get out of bed like this? That can't be possible. Seriously, what's your secret? Eggs? Mayonnaise?"

"We can rule out sunlight," Tony chimes in from across the table. Without looking up, Bucky flips him the finger.

"Hang on, I'm going to need something to hold this—no, not those," Pepper adds as a small robot wheels over wielding a clawful of nuts and bolts. "I know we've had visitors with kids, though, so we must have—oh, that's better," she says as another claw offers up a pile of colorful plastic pieces.

"You're fucking kidding me," Bucky says, not moving lest he ruin her work. But the clips are sparkly and rainbow and they're shaped like fucking butterflies.

"These will do," Pepper sounds enthused and Bucky resigns himself to the inevitable. "Hey, Tony, remember back when every kid was wearing these?"

" _Kids_ ," Bucky says through his teeth, "Did you miss the part where these are for  _kids?"_

"Those things were everywhere. Everyone nowadays is such a wuss. 'I hope you step on a Lego' they tell me. Step on a Lego. _Babies_. They have no idea."

"Who tells you that, kids on the Internet?" Bucky rolls his eyes. "Are you arguing with children about video games again? No? What is it this time? Anime? Oh wait. Fanfiction. It's fanfiction."

Tony's actually silent for a fraction of a second, trying to think of a retort.

"Was I right? Oh  _God._ I'm  _right,_ aren't I?"

Pepper brushes a strand out from behind Bucky's ear. "I think both of you need to be banned from Tumblr."

"I tend to stay out of _that_ corner of the Internet, anyway," Bucky mutters, "Found too much of _me_ over there. It's. Uh."

"Oh, yeah, that'll happen," Tony grimaces. "Whoa. You should be glad they can't see you now, they'd have a field day. Enjoying yourself, Barbie Deluxe?"

And okay, it is kind of nice that Pepper's having fun playing with his hair, not that anything could make him admit it. Maybe not so nice when his hair's twisted and twined up every which way and he's pinned in about a million places with those sharp little butterflies. But Pepper's gentle fingers are still at his scalp, tender and keeping him in place. "Almost done."

She's just stepped back to look over her handiwork when Natasha comes by with her camera.

"Way ahead of you," Tony holds up his own phone, "The hair is a work of art,"

Bucky puts his butterfly-adorned head in his hands.

 *

The hairclip pictures start getting some nastier responses. Bucky had seen it as pure ridiculousness, but apparently there are people out there who get incredibly offended over a man in hairclips. Bucky reads over the comments, feeling pretty damn amused. It seems Tumblr has turned him into a poster boy for the destruction of gender roles. He's been labeled a social justice icon; Bucky gets a good laugh out of that.

He makes the mistake of digging further and soon his amusement sours. 

It starts with one comment thread.

_Are we just going to forget that he's killed hundreds of people?_

_This man is an evil serial murderer and Tumblr's fangirling over the disney suit. sick._

_He should be wearing a jumpsuit and handcuffs, not Snuggies and hair clips. #HYDRA2k14 #NeverForget #WinterSoldier_

_Fuck this man. Don't let his cute innocent act charm you. Yes, it is an act. This man is cold-blooded and merciless and he's hiding it behind disney blankets. Signal boost for awareness. Tear. This. Man. Down._

_Man why tf the Avengers going along with this? I'm actually so disappointed with Cap and I hate this because he's one of my idols, but he of all people should know about honoring those who died protecting the safety of the world and there he is hugging their killer and smiling. It makes me so sick and so sad._

That one stops Bucky's breath for a moment. And there are so many more, Everyone's got something to say, whether they're crying out  _POOR BABY_ (you know they're crying out when they use all caps) or telling some story of the Soldier brutalizing their family and friends. There's a gif of a news clip, the flaming helicarrier crash-landing in the Potomac, and more of the photos from that goddamned fucking article.

The thread is continued in a litany of tirades.

_Go easy on Cap. It's hard for him to think straight bc remember that man's his friend turned traitor. IDK what he's dealing with but he needs our support._

_Don't tell me how to react. I'm speaking as a personal victim and you have no right to tell me I can't be angry about this. This man killed my aunt and uncle. I don't care how Cap deals with his own problems but how can he possibly stand by the Winter Soldier? #NeverForget #WinterSoldier_

_It's not his fault. The poor guy had his brain fucked with and got all fucked up. Did you see this article about what they did to him? He was tortured and had everything taken away from him. THEY PUT ELECTRICITY THROUGH HIS BRAIN. THEY. PUT. ELECTRICITY. THROUGH. HIS. BRAIN. and after all that he's still hanging in there and recovering and being totally cute. He deserves all the respect..._

When tears blur his vision, when his stomach begins to twist and churn, JARVIS powers down the computer and suggests that he take a rest.

*

Natasha finds him later, curled up on his couch with Olaf pulled tightly around him.

"Don't," he says as she whips out her phone. "I'm serious, don't."

"Okay, okay," She holds up a hand and slides the phone back into her pocket. Then she flops down next to him. "You okay?"

He sighs. "I don't want any more pictures of me on the Internet."

She frowns. "You know I wasn't—you know I do that to the rest of them, right?"

"It's not that," Bucky says, "It's just...it's different, for me."

"Different, why?" She looks at him steadily and openly. It's like she doesn't  _know_ , but how can she not? He shakes his head.

"I just...I can't pretend. I thought I could, uh, joke around like this, but you're posting all these pictures and calling it  _adorable_ and I—Nat, I know how it feels to break someone's _neck_ in my hand. One time, I..." he stops. Not going there, not now. "I'm not...it's just sick, that I can...I don't know what the fuck it means that I'm still alive, I know Steve's over the moon about it, but the fact that I didn't get _dead_ seventy years ago means...look, whatever I am, I am not _adorable._ I can't even joke. It's...when I think of everyone I killed...if they could see me now...bet I wasn't so fucking _cute_ to _them_." He exhales a humorless laugh.

She's still giving him that look. "Have you been digging around on the Internet?" He doesn't answer, nuzzling into Olaf. He stops and glares when her lip quirks upward.

"Listen, Bucky, the public eye...you think anyone's invincible there? They change their minds like politicians. What's that phrase...they flip faster than coke-addicted goldfish. Yeah?"

Bucky just stares.

"Okay, look, I'm _not_ letting you wallow in self-hatred. Do you know how many of us have to deal with shit we've done? Do you know how many of us get pinned to a board in the press? There's Bruce, talk about an iffy relationship with the public eye. People love Tony when scientific research is getting funded, or, more accurately, when he shuts up and lets Pepper handle PR. As soon as he tries to do anything in person, he gets his ass hauled to court. And then there's me. I decide to hand out the truth in gift-wrapping and suddenly everyone hates me." She shrugs. "Knew it would happen. Point is, they don't know shit. And you have the right to live your life and goof around—uh. Bad pun not intended—no matter what the public says."

"But some of them are right. I killed  _so many_ people. So many  _good people,_ or they must have been—"

"So did I, remember? Good people..." she shrugs, "Bad people...people people." She sighs, then gives him a small smile. "You really don't want to join my league of adorable ex-villain serial assassins? Because—" gently, she reaches over and smoothes his hair, and her hand comes back with a stray plastic butterfly. "You totally qualify."

"It's not just  _that,_ " Bucky mutters, glaring at the butterfly. "It's—"

— _poor baby_ —

— _i just want to give him ALL THE HUGS—_

— _BBY NO—_

Back with HYDRA, they'd told him they were enhancing his competence. In some ways, that was true. They enabled him to push limits that would have crushed most human beings. But they did that at the expense of his capability to function as a human being, and those effects lasted long after he'd started regaining an understanding of what it meant to  _be_ human.

And he tried, he still tries, to uphold some semblance of competence. And still he slips and freaks out, shakes and freezes up and gets ridiculously upset over tiny things like kids' movies. (Okay, but it's not tiny, they had a chair to restrain children and make them scream. That is not material suited to children.) Sometimes he is scared beyond reason, alone as he was in the cryo tank, clinging to the nearest warm body that'll hold him. And sometimes there isn't anyone to cling onto, and he ends up he wearing a snowman blanket for two weeks at a time and kind of forgetting about it.

And these humiliating slips, evidence of his failure? She wants to put them on the web for everyone to see.

But he can't explain that to her without getting more vulnerable than either of them would be comfortable with. "It makes me look stupid," he manages.  _It makes me look weak. Ridiculous._

"Uh, hello?" She holds out the phone. There's a picture of Clint on the archery range in the Pluto Snuggie. He looks so focused and intense, Bucky's pretty sure he totally forgot what he was wearing. He snorts, despite himself. "See? Look, if you really don't want the pictures up, I won't post them. But don't think we're trying to—to make light of what happened to you. I still think you have the right to be human, though, and be a giant adorable doofus, which you absolutely _are_ , by the way, no arguing with me. And anyone who says otherwise..." She looks entirely serious now, "They don't know you. They have no _idea_."

She smirks. "And as for the image thing—" she scrolls, and there's a picture of Tony in all seriousness working on the Snuggie-clad suit of armor. "—come on, everyone here pretty much does it to themselves."

"Yeah? I don't see any of  _your_ pictures going out on the web."

"Well," she smiles, "That's because no one's caught me out with a camera."

"Was that a challenge I heard? Because that _sounded_ like a challenge."

"Just remember," she cautions, "Don't dish it if you can't take it—hey!" A bouncy ball hits her in the nose.

"Back at you," Bucky smirks. She rolls her eyes.

"You've really, really got to stop quoting from Tumblr."

*

"Oh, man." Bucky falls onto the couch laughing. "Does—does no one here realize Stark's lying about the blanket shortage?"

Steve blushes under his Sebastian the Crab Snuggie. Tony throws out his arms. "Hey now, cold's hazardous to super soldiers. Just looking out for the team."

"Of course. So what are we watching?" Bucky pulls Olaf tighter around his shoulders and scoots over next to Steve. "Please say Star Wars, please say Star Wars..."

"We're watching a  _classic,_ " Tony flips the cursor over  _Titanic._

"Please, no." Natasha calls from the doorway.

"I'm  _kidding._ We're watching Lord of the Rings, because that 'I can't carry it for you' reference should _not_ have gone over his head. This is Cap we're talking about. Dramatic speeches? Heroic sacrifice? Dopey gazing into each others' eyes? How has Steve not watched these?"

"Lord of the Rings? Based off Tolkien's stuff?" Bucky read and re-read  _The Hobbit_ to Steve countless times during a particularly bad fever, back in the day.

"How do  _you_ know that when he doesn't?"

"Tumblr."

"Ah."

"Wait, they made a film about the Titanic?" Steve sounds interested. Vague phrases float through Bucky's mind. Unsinkable, Californian, maiden voyage, Carpathia. 

" _No._ It never happened. Don't look it up." Nat flops down on Bucky's other side. "Hey, Steve, you know Tony's lying about the blanket shortage, right?"

"It's a beautiful thing, let it happen." Tony calls, "And now we're totally watching this sometime."

Natasha groans.

"Anyway, I've actually been reading the books," Bucky says, "Never got the chance, before, but I _was_ kind of a fan of  _The Hobbit._ "

"You used to read it to me," Steve says, so softly that everyone has to look away for a moment. Ah, jeez, his eyes are shiny and he's got that smile on his face, that smile when he's trying not to burst into tears. Bucky sees that goddamned look about every other day now, but usually not because of a  _happy_ moment.

"Yeah, I remember," Bucky tells him, wrapping an arm around his shoulders. Not that he'd admit it, but hugging in Snuggies is possibly the best and fuzziest feeling ever.

The movie choice is a little unfortunate, and when Gandalf falls into the chasm and Frodo starts screaming, Bucky ends up with Steve's face buried in his shoulder.

"Ah. Right. Totally didn't think that through, but if it's any consolation, he comes back even more badass. So that, uh, that's totally a good thing, right? Not being dead? Ultra level-up? You know what? I'll shut up now. You're witnessing a first, people, call the media." Bucky thinks that might be Tony's version of an apology, and shrugs to show that he's fine. He wraps his arms tighter around Steve. Okay, whoever invented Snuggies knew what they were about, unfortunate naming aside.

They end up marathon-watching the trilogy late into the night, and if the Internet has something to say about Olaf the Snowman cuddling a misty-eyed Sebastian, well, Bucky's sure they'll love Daisy Duck and Sulley fighting over the popcorn bowl. And Daisy Duck getting popcorn poured over her head.

 _#vengeance is a dish best served with butter,_ Bucky types,  _#adorable._

**Author's Note:**

> Ridiculousness. I warned you up in the tags.
> 
> The Disney thing was in reference to a mention in [another fic I wrote](http://archiveofourown.org/works/3527060/chapters/8060052).


End file.
